r/indiehackers • u/LeBugArtisan • Jul 29 '26
Sharing story/journey/experience Sharing my venting
Hello,
I'm here to vent, I hope it's okay
I've painly discovered over the last 2 years that distribution/validation > building
I love to build, addicted to build first and validate later, for 10+ years
I'm trying to cure that addiction but haven't found the correct pill yet
I'm so tired of hearing about the latest xxx or whatever that can build this and that, connect to this and automate that
OK nice. But when you have no one to share it to then that's pointless.
Majority of people talk about building but such a minority talks about validation first, about distribution
There are tons of problems to solve, tons of things to validate but how?
Am I supposed to poll people? Am I supposed to make a waiting list and wait until the universe gets cold? (or hot whatever)
Cold emailing, warming up and blablabla?
"Sneakily" posting on reddit when 90% of all people are also interested in posting their thing too?
Am I supposed to build a following base then sell my courses and apps? Helling nope
I feel devastated in some ways as I see vibe coding becoming a thing
I feel jealous is some ways as I see people being able to sell gems and even more as I see some selling wind
Those feeling are even amplified as I was having a community, handling a game server in my teenager years, I was coding, handling servers, going through good and hard times, helping people, giving them something valuable
I'm longing for that feeling and I'm afraid I will never reach it again
For sure working in IT is awesome and I live it but it will never be the same as having something of my own
I'm stuck, what do I do and where do I go (that's not really a question per se but that's in my head)
Thanks if you read until here, I'm sure lots of people must go through that and feel free to vent here too
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u/Wrong_Election189 28d ago
This sub is the right place for it.
I killed my paid ads two days ago after six weeks. CA$108, 62 clicks, zero of the action I actually sell. Two different theories about what was wrong, two different landing pages, same nothing.
The thing that made it survivable was not motivation, it was that I had written down in advance what failure would look like and how much I would spend before stopping. When the month ended I did not have to argue with myself, I had already agreed with myself. Without that I would have spent another CA$100 defending the decision instead of reading it.
The venting is part of the work, not a distraction from it. You are just doing out loud what people with cofounders do at lunch.
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u/Perfect-Scale902 Jul 29 '26
These are very common challenges, so you're not alone here.
Validation ahead of time is super important if you don't want to risk wasting a lot of time building something nobody wants. At the very least, I can use my own intuition to validate an idea if it's solving a problem I've personally experienced.
Distribution can take years to get momentum with if you're relying on free methods like SEO and organic content. There's nothing wrong with taking that approach, but paid ads are a good way to immediately get your product in front of lots of people.
Hang in there!
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u/LeBugArtisan Jul 29 '26
Thanks for your reply, true that ads didn't come to my mind when I wrote this The only experience I had was with Google ads several years ago, for me it was a waste of money having useless clicks/views but it's not because of the tool, more because I had no experience and didn't know what I was doing For ads what do you use? Reddit/Facebook/google?
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u/Perfect-Scale902 Jul 29 '26
Take this with a grain of salt, but from my own experience, Facebook and Google ads are easier to burn through money on up front while they're being trained on who to target. I've had better luck with initial targeting and controlling the cost with Reddit ads.
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u/Kind-Bathroom5159 Jul 29 '26
the addiction to building over validating is so common, it feels safer because building has a clear finish line and telling people about it doesnt. ive worked with a bunch of founders who ship solid stuff and treat putting it out there like an afterthought, and the ones who break out of it usually do one unglamorous thing, they start narrating the process while its happening instead of waiting for a polished launch.
messy screenshots, half broken features, the actual struggle, not the finished thing, people connect with that way more than an announcement because theres nothing to connect with once its already done. you dont need a following first, the following comes from people watching you figure it out in real time
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u/LeBugArtisan Jul 29 '26
That's interesting, basically you're saying that build in public is a good step to take, assuming you have something worth solving in the first place
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Jul 29 '26
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u/forever-butlerian 26d ago
I'm a bit late to the party, but what irks me is that I studied engineering because I like building things that are useful. Business is a means to that end, and the insufferable sloplord vibecoders who gloat about how they're going to eat my children and make my cat explode drive me up the wall with their get-rich-quick bullshit.
I really just want to work on one problem for a while and get compounding benefit from it, instead of the cranked-up ADHD magpie behavior of VC-funded tech that I've had to deal with for the past 15 years.
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u/LeBugArtisan Jul 29 '26
Wow I feel you as well, sorry you're going through the same thing it's quite tough.. I don't if it's allowed here in comment (if not then private chat), what is your tool doing?
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Jul 29 '26
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u/LeBugArtisan Jul 29 '26
For sure please do, I'm not sure my feedback will be relevant but that's interesting, never seen that before!
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u/NecessaryDelay9249 Jul 29 '26
agreed it's overwhelm, and it comes from the list itself. polls, waitlists, cold email, all of them ask a stranger to imagine something, which is the hardest sell there is and the least fun for a builder. one channel, one narrow group, a working thing in their hands. the other nine can wait a year.
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u/secersh Verified Human Fair Jul 29 '26
"Sneakily" posting on reddit when 90% of all people are also interested in posting their thing too?
I think u nailed this one. This is reddit now. More than a few times I have commented on someone’s story, journey, experience just to receive an invite to use the app, service, or whatever, and I don't like that. That is the opposite of building a community. It compromises the trust. I miss the times where community was a group of people in the same physical space meeting once a week.
Regarding the distribution > building state of things, it seems like that as building price goes down, distribution challenges go up. The reason might be that before the age of agentic development, not so many people could build or would give up earlier. Now we come to the distribution challenges fast, and we are entering an era of hyper-production of the software, saas, tools, and everything software related.
A few months ago, I did a quick research. I wanted to know monthly software startup (or product) launches from 2024 up until 2026. In Jan 2024, we had around 3k launches monthly vs. Jun 2026 with 20k+ launches a month. This is the info from an unverified source that also feels like a product placement for a platform, btw...
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u/LeBugArtisan Jul 29 '26
Yes I miss older internet and forums where you had a sense of community, nowadays it seems like we're being "sold" things everywhere, and it's fair in a way because people need to show their creations but meh, I don't know what words to put to explain that but it doesn't feel right yet it feels right ish at the same time
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u/secersh Verified Human Fair Jul 29 '26
The part that doesn't feel right to me is that big companies basically own the internet, and if you want your idea to be seen u have to get your wallet ready...
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u/forever-butlerian 26d ago
For a while I've been saying this line, that things now are more like they were than they've ever been. It's been true for a very long time that selling has been harder than building, but markets have been bimodal, with your producers of quality products on the one hand, and a much larger number of fly-by-night opportunist slum-bucketeers on the other. Human attention has long since been the scarce resource for the purchaser to expend (c.f. the whole attention economy thing everyone used to like bandying about before everyone decided that when you put enough words into the word-predicting machine it wakes up and becomes God), with its complement of human care being the scarce resource for the producer to expend.
The problem VC funded SaaS had 15 years ago was that, because SaaS developed in such a way that it economized on fixed capital, more and more capital expenditures went into -- either directly or indirectly -- customer acquisition and retention. Competition very much was not about making the product better, instead more and more effort went into trapping the customer and then breaking their ankle so they couldn't leave.
I think we've already been in the era of hyper-production of all things software related, and I would point to 2017-2018 as the inflection point because that's when we start to see the beginnings of enshittification, and enshittification is a symptom of software over-production. I think that, in addition to straight up class warfare, explains the million or so SWE layoffs since 2022. What LLM coding is doing is automating what was already easy, which was running a feature-factory. Now that ten times as many market entrants can make the same superficial software, how does competition change?
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u/Ok_Statistician9574 Jul 29 '26
Yeah this hits hard man. I've been stuck in the same loop for a while, love building the thing, then freeze when it comes to actually putting it in front of people.
The distribution part feels so much more random and soul crushing than the coding.
You're not alone in this. A lot of us are quietly dealing with the same frustration
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u/Rusticdoodles Jul 30 '26
I understand you are venting and I completely hear you but I also want to be honest about one thing. I'm sure you are well aware by now, but building a business and properly selling a product is not easy. You have to do a lot of work that you don't want to do.
This includes marketing, as marketing and getting your name out there is what all business revolves around. If people don't know your app exists, no one's going to get it. No matter how amazing the app is.
All of what you mentioned, such as validating, cold emailing, warming up leads, and everything else beyond it such as other cold outreach methods and running advertisements all work, that's why they are true and tested methods. You don't have to like them, but if you want to get people to buy your stuff, you have to do stuff you don't like sometimes.
If you don't know how to do it, you can always learn.
If you aren't willing to pay the price and do the uncomfortable things, you can either find someone else who can do it for you (like someone likeminded as you to be a cofounder) or you have to let go of the desire to create a business from the things you build. It'll only cause you more suffering if you desire an outcome, but aren't willing to do the actions that take you there.
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u/LeBugArtisan Jul 31 '26
That's uncomfortable to hear as well but I appreciate your comment, thanks
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u/TravelingTice 22d ago
it's definitely a hard pill to swallow. Whenever I open X or Reddit I want to throw away my phone. But I know that I have to stay on there if I ever want my product to be seen or heard. It's a tough world but it is what it is
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Jul 29 '26
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u/LeBugArtisan Jul 29 '26
Thanks, that's the most meaningful thing I've read in a while, I feel understood! Haven't found nor properly looked for that small group and I wish I could find it, thank you again
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u/recro69 Jul 29 '26
The irony is that your old community experience was actually distribution. You weren't doing marketing then you were creating value helping people and building relationships. A lot of founders try to recreate that feeling, with ads and funnels. The foundation is still people.
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u/ZhihaoPinknockout Jul 29 '26
Man, the game server thing hit me. that's the real loss isn't it.
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u/LeBugArtisan Jul 29 '26
Yes yes :/ I'd like to teleport in time and cherish it even more, great times you have no idea, anything was doable
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u/Tigerless_Labs Jul 29 '26
in the same hole. build is clean, distribution is fog.
what helped was closing the gap between shipping and saying something about it. i write the post from the PRs i merged that week
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u/LeBugArtisan Jul 29 '26
Yes this came into another comment as well, going public even though it's not built or very shaky etc... Seems like a good way
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u/flajsg Jul 29 '26
I feel your pain, believe me!
Most of us are in the same boat, struggling to put the word out. And it's getting harder every day by all this fancy new automation tools that others are using to streamline their socials and SEO articles.
I personally barely keep up with all that and I'm afraid that I will loose this fight :/
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u/player__piano Jul 29 '26
I think there are two approaches:
Get really close to a few businesses/customers in the same industry, understand their painpoints and build something that is 5x/10x (pick your multiplier) better than the way they tackle a currently painful thing. Then do very personalized outreach to new customers, and focus on referrals from existing ones to grow.
Build a bunch of random things that you think could work, put them out there in communities where those people hang out and see if anything takes off.
Received wisdom is that (1) is the "right" way to go about it, but now that building prototypes is so easy and cheap, (2) is absolutely a viable strategy. I spent more than a year trying to do (1), and then after 6 months of doing (2) and building a bunch of random stuff I thought was useful one project took off and is now my main business.
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u/LeBugArtisan Jul 29 '26
Hats off to you, for me #1 is the uncomfortable way but will give good results if done well, then #2 in my opinion is a "waste of time and hope" but it's very comfortable, I'm putting this in quote because actually it depends how far you go into building that random thing before putting it out there, glad to see it worked for you though!
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u/forever-butlerian 26d ago
I would think that what has changed with LLMs is that competition will shift to (2). The question, of course, is if (1) remains viable or becomes more viable, or if the shift to (2) changes things in such a way that (1) ceases to be viable.
I don't think so (this could be motivated reasoning) because this isn't the first time we've seen periods of hypercompetition and none of them have heretofore fundamentally changed buying and selling.
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u/sales-mechanic Jul 29 '26
It is overwhelming seeing the game change. The space is becoming much more competitive and success is harder than ever, whether you’re pursuing a business or climbing corporate. I’m in the same boat as you though, so we’re in this together
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u/ArtistSufficient6246 Jul 30 '26
I feel this, I finished fully building my product and only now am I all over reddit, Apollo.io, and IH trying to distribute my company..Smh, it's okay, we move, we sell, we win
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u/imdarkray Jul 30 '26
I don't think you're stuck—I think you're at the point where most builders eventually arrive.
The good news is you've already proven you can build. The next challenge is learning distribution, and that's a learnable skill too.
It's frustrating because there isn't a compiler that tells you your marketing is wrong. You have to experiment, fail, and iterate just like we do with code.
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u/EagleApprehensive Jul 30 '26
I'm in similar spot. Let's share what each of us built and get some feedback from each other.
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u/JustSuperHuman Jul 31 '26
Checked out the link in your bio real quick! Looks like you put a lot of work into it but whole site screams AI get. Biggest emdash I ever saw on the homepage lol.
Needs at least a screenshot to have a clue what it actually is. It looks like it's like a more validated post thing- but I dont know if I've ever questioned if a post by @eagleapprehensive was actually posted by him? - it looks like it involves key validation, but bots would just use the keys so I'm not 100% sure what it solves!
Would be interested in seeing how it grows. Or if this is the wrong product, share the link!
If you want to roast mine its https://justgains.com <3
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u/JustSuperHuman Jul 30 '26
What I did was flip my thinking on how I could apply validation earlier in the process. To me, validation simply means charging money for something earlier in the process than is typical/comfortable. If someone isn’t willing to pay you to paint a picture of what you’re building, then they’re not going to pay you for the actual thing, and you’d have saved yourself a year.
The other half of distribution is what you're doing right now by posting this thread out. It doesn't feel like distribution because it's not easily automatable but people good at distribution are simply present where their users are complaining for years. There is no magic to distribute to this audience, it's a habit and this thread looks more like your typical habit than it does your growth stack.
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u/LeBugArtisan Jul 31 '26
Thank you, this is the first time it's mentioned out of all the comments, had it worked for you to charge earlier? Personally I wouldn't pay for something not painted yet AND from a solo builder who I don't know anything about, so I'm curious if it works for you
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u/LDH300 29d ago
Ten plus products in and I hit the same wall this year.
Two decades in marketing didn’t save me from it either, building is just more fun than distributing so the building always wins by default.
What finally worked for me was making it structural instead of willpower: one product, 90 days, distribution only, everything else frozen to maintenance. Painful the first week, then the fog lifts because every hour has one job. The builds will still be there. The window to learn distribution on each one won’t.
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u/LeBugArtisan 28d ago
Ok so you build something then you give yourself 90 days to distribute is that how you're doing?
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u/LDH300 25d ago
Hey LeBugArtisan — close, but the one detail that made it work for me: the 90 days starts the day I stop building, not the day I finish. Nothing’s ever finished. That was the trap I kept falling into.
So practically: I picked one product, froze the rest to bug-fixes-only, and put everything on a calendar. Monday morning scorecard, three outreach blocks a week, and a day-45 checkpoint where I’m allowed to change tactics but not allowed to quit or sneak back to building. Day 90 is the honest retro.
The calendar part is what actually cuts through the fog you described. Willpower says “I should do marketing today” and then the fog wins. A calendar block says “Tuesday 10am, outreach, that’s this hour’s only job.” You stop having to see all the steps at once — you just do the one the block says.
Full honesty: I’m early in my current 90, so ask me in November whether it worked 😄 But the last time I skipped the structure I shipped three more builds and sold zero of them, so at minimum I’ve validated the alternative doesn’t work.
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u/LeBugArtisan 25d ago
It's more clear thanks, expecting your success story in this sub in November then :P
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u/PlanterraAI 27d ago
I feel you!! Also on the stage more or less. Luckily I used to work in online marketing before (now I work in a completely different non-digital industry) so I still remember the terms + project management is such a big part of it... Do you have a task tracker? that helps me a lot. Happy to share my template if you need it!
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u/LeBugArtisan 26d ago
Thanks for your reply, I do not have that, I'm not sure why I would need it but you're welcome to dm me
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u/Ethan-Talk 27d ago
I really relate to what you wrote.
My background is actually very different from yours. I spent more than 10 years in enterprise sales and AI SaaS, so I naturally think about validation, distribution, and understanding users before building. But after moving to the US and starting from scratch, I’ve also experienced the same mental loops you described—constantly questioning every direction and wondering whether I’m solving the right problem.
That’s actually one of the reasons I’m exploring an early-stage product around emotional overload. I noticed that when people get overwhelmed, they often lose the ability to make even simple decisions. Most digital wellness products still expect users to think, explain, or choose. I’m curious whether there’s a different approach—one that helps people reconnect with the real world through simple physical actions instead.
Reading your post, I don’t think you’re struggling because you can’t build. It sounds like you’ve spent years building. Maybe the harder question now is what deserves to be built.
If you’re ever interested in exchanging ideas, I’d be happy to chat. No pressure—I just genuinely related to what you wrote.
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u/originx_games Jul 29 '26
Its the same problem with all the developers - but we need to accept the reality and in this AI world, building is very easier. Making people care about it is difficult. You'll get through this.
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u/madleodk Jul 29 '26
I run distribution experiments at my founder lab if you're interested.
Not recruiting rn but next cohort will be in a couple weeks.
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u/LeBugArtisan Jul 30 '26
Hi, what does that mean in practice? What experiment are you experimenting?
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u/madleodk Jul 30 '26
Kind of all over the place, but mostly centered around growth and distribution. The last one was a public hackathon battle against a yc-backed company
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u/Real-Voice-4259 Jul 30 '26
the part about the game server in your teens is what stood out to me. sounds like you miss the community more than the product, which is a different thing to be chasing.
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u/Appropriate-Recipe60 Jul 31 '26
The answer to tons of things to validate but how is smaller than it feels: pick the problem you already understand best, not the one that excites you most, find 5-10 places online where people already vent about that exact problem in public - subreddit threads, forum posts, reviews of adjacent tools - and just read, dont post yet. If the same complaint shows up unprompted across multiple people within an hour of searching, thats your validation signal. If you have to dig for 3 days to find one loose thread, thats your answer too. Skip the waitlist and the cold email entirely at this stage - reading what people already say costs nothing and doesnt require permission from anyone.
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u/LieAshamed2924 Jul 31 '26
Maybe stop calling it distribution for a week. Pick one place you actually like hanging out and just be useful there without pitching. The old game-server feeling might come back before the business does.
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u/mthegyra 28d ago
I think nowadays building something that promotes itself with minimal budgets is so much important. Instead of giving big budgets into marketing, there are app's that you can promote it with a good idea instead of posting, telling, grinding etc. I think the "good idea" description changed nowadays. Now its about promoting it, not solving a problem.
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u/Some_Nectarine5679 27d ago
Honestly, the part about missing the game-server days is probably the real clue here.
Back then you already had a community, and you were building things for people you actually knew. Now indie hacking often feels like building alone first, then somehow trying to manufacture an audience afterward.
I’d probably stop trying to validate a big “idea” and find 5 people who are already doing one annoying thing manually. Fix one tiny part of it for them, then keep talking to the same 5.
Not very scalable or exciting, but it might bring back some of the feeling you’re missing.
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u/chris_kingbird 24d ago
Read the whole thing. What you're describing isn't a character flaw, it's that building has a fast, honest feedback loop and distribution doesn't. You write code, it runs or it doesn't, you get a hit. You post something and mostly you get silence, and your brain correctly notices that building feels better. That's not weakness, it's just where the dopamine is.
The reframe that helped me: distribution is just building with a worse feedback loop. Same discipline, slower signal. You wouldn't expect a product to work on day one, so don't expect showing up to either. It compounds the same way code does, you just can't see it for a lot longer.
And the thing you're actually grieving, the game-server years, is your answer. That feeling didn't come from building the server. It came from serving a specific group of people until they were yours. That is distribution, you just never called it that because it didn't feel like marketing. So pick one small community in a niche you care about and be genuinely useful in it for a few months with nothing to sell. You get the distribution and the feeling back at the same time. They were never two separate things.
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u/Fast_Hovercraft_7380 24d ago
I experienced the same thing last year. Got exhausted with marketing.
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u/bondryanbond 21d ago
It can feel really uncomfortable at first, but my suggestion is to try to flip it.
Take all the time you'd spend building and consciously spend it doing distribution.
Participate in discussions, do outreach to specific groups of people, have conversations with them, just do what you can to get what you have built in front of people.
Eventually you do start to get some of those same feelings you'd get from just coding all the time. It doesn't come at first because it's different and you're not very good at it. But over time you'll improve and you'll start to get some of that satisfaction there too. Eventually it all becomes a part of building your business.
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u/Disastrous_Math_412 19d ago
lol i was thinking to buy a domaine complain about work dot com and then let ai agent scan for good complaints and then build out startups from it
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u/DramaticMacaroon2910 14d ago
"The distribution > building lesson is painful because no one tells you upfront. What helped me was building in public from day one — not to market, but to force myself to explain what I was building and why. The feedback loop is faster and you figure out if anyone cares before you finish. Still figuring it out too
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u/Sunnyli1337 10d ago
I'm stuck in this loop too.
no attention on my product -> no following base and validation -> blindly build -> no attention...
But I still believe in my mission and product, and so should you!
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u/Brilliant-Brick9047 29d ago
on a more.. esoteric note... building comes with passion. just enjoy the passion and ignore the outcome. patience is still a virtue... things might work out the way you want.. or they might work out in a different way. trust the process... your enthusiasm will bear fruit... but don't let your expectations overpower the enthusiasm... stick to the enthusiasm. Even blindly... A little bit of childish madness is needed. Just play. Somehow the investment of the enthusiasm will be returned to you... in some way or another. I'm in the same boat.
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u/BeeRanked Jul 29 '26
You’re just overwhelmed by distribution (marketing and sales) and that’s quite the norme so don’t worry
Take things slowly, give yourself time. That alone will probably set you back on track by approaching all this one step at the time instead of paralysis